


it never took much convincing to make me believe in you

by swimthewholeriogrande



Series: i'd be home with you [6]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Healing, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:31:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18874174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: A sanctuary can be a person.





	it never took much convincing to make me believe in you

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments on this series, I read all of them about five times each! Very appreciated x

Someone is stroking Jake's hair. It feels, oh fuck, absolutely _incredible_ , and he hears himself making happy, contented noises as nails scratch lightly at his scalp, but he doesn't want to open his eyes. His body feels heavy and warm. 

"...success...ten stitches...no sign of infection..."

Jake huffs out a breath; he wants whoever is talking to be quiet so that he can retreat back into the peaceful dark again. He stretches his neck into the the petting, grumbling, and the hand stills.

"Jake?" Breath tickles his face, not his own. "Jake, how do you feel?"

He manages to squint to see a little; faces swim in and out of his vision, Amy and Gina and Holt. Amy's face is mottled with healing bruises. He reaches for her with a whine, an IV tugging distantly at his wrist; the floaty sleepy sensation is starting to feel similiar to being drugged in that room, the TV murmuring incessantly. "Nngh," Jake grunts, and Gina's acrylic nails start that wonderful scratching again. 

"Just had to stitch a gash." Amy tells him, her voice still weak. "Reopened. S'okay."

Jake blinks and the world wavers. Amy's eyes are fixed on his face, soft and loving, and even though he's almost positive they're safe he has to make sure. 

"Gerry?" he slurs, tongue heavy. "Safe?"

Over Amy's shoulder, he sees Holt close his eyes briefly, as if in great pain, but Amy just nods fiercely. "He's gone," she promises. "Safe."

Gina hums a two-note tune. "Back to sleep, Jakey," she prompts, and Jake happily complies.

-

Jake is used to his world feeling small.

First it was prison, the cage he had paced in like if he just got the right pattern of steps, they'd let him go. After that, the day he'd married Amy, the world had never felt bigger - like he could do anything, and be happy, and never feel so small again - but then he had been in that room for what he was told was over a year, pissing in a bucket and watching his wife get torn apart through bloody eyes. And now the whole universe had become a hospital room.

Jake is used to tiny worlds, but he does not enjoy them.

Two weeks after they're rescued, when the infected burns on his thighs have healed and his broken fingers are neatly splinted together and he feels clean, having actually gotten to wash himself, he shuffles over to Amy's bed and sits with her. She is recovering too; her leg is in a cast to the knee, a thick and heavy boot, and he can see tiny dotted puncture wounds from the tazer on her wrists. There is a scarring line around her throat, a perfect ring, a memory of a garrotting that almost killed her and almost killed him to watch.

But oh, God, she's so beautiful. Even still injured, she looks like a goddess, and he touches her face and feels the most incredible sense of calm that he had missed so much for those thirteen months. Jake feels all the breath rush out of him. He hadn't gotten to look at her like this in so long, too busy trying to keep them both alive, but he considers her now - his _wife_ \- and knows that when she opens his eyes he will be there.

She is sleeping and he touches her face. He'll walk with a limp for the rest of his life. "I want to go home," he tells her.

-

Amy is cleared to leave the hospital the day before Jake is, but of course she stays with him. It's only been 17 days since Rosa and Terry pulled them out of that hellhole and she'll be damned if she'll leave Jake alone now. He's never left her. Not once. 

She remembers - because she can never not remember - being hot and sick and infected in that room, so bad that Gerry actually got them medical supplies, the whip marks on her back having broken skin, red and raw and open. She remembers Jake's cool hand on her forehead, his lips pressed to her neck. He'd pulled her onto his lap even though it must have pained him and applied the disinfectant to the open wounds, holding her firm, as if she could struggle against the sharp acidic pain it caused with her head so fucked up.

"I've got you," he'd murmured in her ear, so sweet and sure. "I've got you, babe. S'me. I love you."

They didn't say that often. It had to be a given thing, because they were too tired and sore to speak of love, but she had needed to hear it then and he had given it to her.

So yeah, she would stay with him. And soon, they'd go home, and try and make some sense out of what was left of each other.


End file.
